Pendants and charms are often the focal piece of jewelry designs, especially necklaces and bracelets. From metal to gemstone to crystal pendants, we are proud of our ever expanding selection of jewelry making charms and pendants, and hope you'll enjoy browsing and shopping our collection. We emphasize style, color, and quality, while offering affordable price points.

Jewelry Pendants and Charms

Pendants can be the focal of your bracelet, necklace and even earring designs. From using charms as simple drops in earrings to using pendants as centerpieces for elegant necklace designs, our designers have put together a few tips and tricks to let you know how to use what and when.

Using charms in jewelry desings: Typically, we call something a charm if it is 24mm to 25mm (about 1 inch) in length and/or diameter. This size can be perfect to dangle from an eye pin or jump ring as part of an earring design. OR you can use charms as the centerpiece of a simple and dainty necklace design. Jewelry making charms can also be used in drop beaded bracelets and more traditional charm bracelets. You can also drop charms off clasps or extender chains to add a little flair in unexpected places. Charms are created with soldered loops at the top that run parallel to the design of the charm itself; this means you will often need a jump ring or split ring to attach your charm to your chain or beading wire so you can incorporate it into your design.

Top drilled pendants: Top drilled pendants can be a lot of fun to work with. They lend themselves beautifully to using pendant bails, which offer a simple and easy way to create focal points; simply attach a bail to the pendant, string the bail onto the center of your beading wire and then bead around it using beads and components that match your pendant and the bail. Feeling a bit more creative than that? Top drilled pendants are perfect for creating your own beaded bail. Simply use metal beads or seed beads - whatever will work best in your design - to create a bail that blends perfectly into the rest of your necklace design.

Horizontally drilled pendants: Typically, pendants that are horizontally drilled are trapezoids or rectangles or teardrops. What is fun about horizontally drilled pendants is that you don't need a bail and you don't need knowledge of wire wrapping or weaving to work with them. Just center the pendant on your beading wire and string away!

Vertically drilled pendants: A lot of people - especially beginner beaders - ask about vertically drilled pendants. Specifically, they want to know if they can use a bail or not. The answer is usually no. A vertically drilled pendant has a hole that runs from the top to bottom through the center of the pendant itself. The most common way to create your own bail for pendants like this is to take a long headpin (usually 3 to 4 inches will suffice), run the headpin through the pendant and then create a wire wrapped loop. You can attach that loop to chain or string it onto beading wire. Another way to use vertically drilled pendants is to center a stop bead (or beads) on your beading wire and run both ends of the wire through the hole in the pendant. For the more advanced beader, vertically drilled pendants also lend themselves to beautiful wire wrapping and woven work.

Donut pendants: Donut pendants can be a lot of fun. You can do simple things like use leather or suede to tie a slip knot around the donut and create a simple necklace that really showcases your pendant. Or you can use a scrap piece of chain to create a bail. Use a jump ring to attach the ends of the chain and then secure the jump ring on a longer piece of chain or slip it onto beading wire so you can string away. If you are feeling particularly adventuruous, you can do a circular brick stitch around the donut to create an interesting beaded pendant or use a peyote stitch to create a woven beaded bail.

Hopefully, learning how to work with different types of pendants gives you great inspiration and helps you to think outside the box a bit so your focal piece becomes the star of the show in all of your necklace designs!

Projects Featuring Pendants and Charms

Want to see a few pendants and charms in action? Check out the projects and video below to see how different styles of pendants and charms can be used in different jewelry designs.